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Freud, Self-Knowledge and Psychoanalysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Béla Szabados
Béla Szabados*
Affiliation:
University of Regina
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Extract

I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1982 , pp. 691 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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References

1 Proust, Marcel Remembrance of Things Past, Swann's Way, Vol. 1, trans. Moncrieff, Scott (London: Chatto & Windus 1960) 59Google Scholar

2 These issues have been quite thoroughly treated. See Ernest Nagel's 'Methodological Issues in Psychoanalytic Theory’ in Hook, Sidney ed., Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy (New York: New York Univer· sity Press 1959) 38–56;Google Scholar also see Adolf Grünbaum's recent articles: ‘Is Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory Pseudo-scientific by Karl Popper's Criterion of Demarcation?', American Philosophical Quarterly, 16 (1979); ‘Epistemological Liabilities of the Clinical Appraisal of Psychoanalytic Theory,’ Nous, 11 (1980). Farrell's, B.A. The Standing of Psychoanalysis (New York: Oxford University Press 1981)Google Scholar is a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of this subject.

3 Wollheim, Richard Freud, Fontana Modern Masters, (London: Wm. Collins, 1971) 9Google Scholar

4 Freud, Sigmund A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Live Right 1935), 248Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

6 Hamlyn, David ‘Self-Knowledge,’ in Mischel, Theodore ed., The Self (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1977) 185-96Google Scholar

7 Hamlyn, 185

8 Freud, 384

9 Freud, 385

10 Hamlyn, 185

11 Ibid.

12 Freud, 377

13 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes, Chapter II, Section 1

14 It is part of the burden of Macintyre's, Alasdair The Unconscious (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1958)Google Scholar that eradication of all talk of ‘the’ unconscious as an entity is desirable.

15 Freud, Sigmund ‘The Unconscious,’ in General Psychological Theory, ed. Rieff, Philip (New York: Collier Books 1963) 120Google Scholar

16 Freud, Sigmund An Autobiographical Study (London: Hogarth) 31-2Google Scholar

17 Ryle, Gilbert The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson & Co. 1959) 155.Google Scholar The influence that Freud had on Ryle is still to be adequately explored by historians of ideas.

18 Wittgenstein himself, unlike many Wittgensteinians, does not rule out the possibility that first-person psychological utterances such as ‘I am afraid’ or ‘I believe …’ may come from reflection prompted by doubt and assisted by inference and may amount to self-discovery. See Investigations, Remark 587 and Part II, Section IX.

19 Freud, ‘The Unconscious,’ 119Google Scholar

20 Freud, ‘The Unconscious,’ 121Google Scholar

21 Freud, ‘The Unconscious,’ 120Google Scholar

22 Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, 249Google Scholar

23 Ibid.

24 A previous version of this paper was read at the 1981 meetings of the Canadian Philosophical Association in Halifax, Nova Scotia; and at the universities of Lethbridge, Calgary and Alberta. In rewriting it, I have learned from Terence Penelhum, Steven Patten, David Hamlyn, Robert Audi and Steve de Haven. I am grateful to the Canada Council for granting me a leave Fellowship (Award 2812) for 1981-82 during which research for this paper was done.